Greedy Goblin

Friday, February 20, 2015

Gimme money or I join Goons!

The conversation below was done in EVE-mails between Seraph IX Basarab, the regular poster of EN24 and me. If he denies their authenticity, I'll just delete all my other mails and publish a mail API. This is why I insist not to discuss anything on Skype or Jabber: I'm not interested in dirty offers that one wouldn't want to see in print:

From: Seraph IX Basarab
Sent: 2015.02.16 05:32
To: Gevlon Goblin,

Hello,

I'm here on behalf of Forsaken Asylum seeking to negotiate a contract against the GSF and/or other CFC entities. Let me know if you're interested.

That wardec was during a time when Forsaken did some internal house cleaning and some weaker members were purged. Since then the alliance has recruited newer more active corps that actually go out and hunt.
We can try to do a 1 week contract if you're interested, at cost as a trial. If we perform up to your standards we can negotiate a longer term contract. If not, that'll be that.

Let me know what you think.

From: Gevlon Goblin
Sent: 2015.02.16 18:29
To: Seraph IX Basarab

I get lot of "I kill lot of Goons, I promise" offers, sorry. Modus Angels kills lots of Goons for me already. Same for -EH-. I'm sorry, I won't pay money for a "maybe".

From: Seraph IX Basarab
Sent: 2015.02.16 20:04
To: Gevlon Goblin,

What if we do 1 week at cost, but you pay AFTER as long as we kill a pre-set amount. Then we can discuss a long term contract. This way you don't lose anything if we don't kill as many as you'd like.

That works?

From: Gevlon Goblin
Sent: 2015.02.17 05:17
To: Seraph IX Basarab,

That's fine. If you can provide 2.5B dead Goons in a week, I gladly pay 0.5B wardec costs.

That's a bit like saying you don't need police in your bank because nobody has robbed it yet. Up to you though.

I think a good deal would be 1 bil per week for 3 months. You wouldn't just be hiring people for a wardec, I would help you personally with your mission.

I'd take the offer.

From: Gevlon Goblin
Sent: 2015.02.19 05:40
To: Seraph IX Basarab

The war costs 500M. So I'd get 2 ISK dead Goonies for ever ISK I pay. Mordus Angels give me 5. Marmite gave me 6. Sorry, it's just business. I have limited ISK, I must give it to the best sources of dead Goons.

My final offer is 2B/week dead Goons.

From: Seraph IX Basarab
Sent: 2015.02.19 07:19
To: Gevlon Goblin,

I know how much it costs but you see nobody makes any money if you simply pay the cost of the fee.

Marmite isn't a factor in this anymore so no point bringing them up. By the way is Deadly Fingertips still working for you? Forsaken is the largest highserc merc alliance out there and we actually hunt throughout highsec rather than just sit on trade hubs.

Mordus Angels is out in 0.0 and they have an ideological incentive which unfortunately I don't carry. Actually I don't even see any reason for you to pay them as they'll continue fighting GSF with or without your money. While I respect them for fighting the good fight and resisting, most of their kills will be Harpies and the odd ratting Rattlesnake once in a while.

But anyway there's no incentive to work for you if all you're offering is the cost of the wardec. You see I could make the 1 bil per week or even more if I contact a GSF diplo and offer to counterdec any merc group that wardecs them. No wardec fee for us. It's simple economics. Now once again, 1 bil per week to wardec GSF and we can do the initial contract for 1 month.

So question is, am I going to get this contract or am I going to go see if GSF will make it more worthwhile for me?

Dear Seraph, let me answer this on my blog. At first, MoA catches awful lot of "odd Rattlesnakes", they killed 198B in January, which is 46x higher than the 1B/week you offered to me. Also, they just captured the prototype of the new CFC capital doctrine, the drone tracking dread.

Since people know I have money and spend it on killing CFC, my mailbox are full of "gimme money and I promise I kill Goons". Some of them are scams, most of them are honest daydreams of mediocre guys. I simply ask them for numerical references, just like I did with you. When they realize that they can't provide that, they silently disappear. That route was open for you too. Instead of taking it, you insisted on your quite bad offer and when you saw I won't take it, you tried to blackmail me. You even did that in a stupid way: if you can't even kill Goon haulers, how could you kill good mercs?

Update: Forsaken Asylum directorate contacted me with an apology and a clear indication that Seraph wasn't authorized to do the above.

PS: I heard you are asking around where do I mine. That's a big secret that you'll never find out!

Anyone else try to be the tough guy without having anything but a big mouth? Come and make the day of my readers!

"they killed 198B in January, which is 46x higher than the 1B/week you offered to me"

Gevlon, from this I think you misunderstand him. He was saying if you pay them 1b/week (wardec fee + 500m) then they would kill your target amount of 2.5b/week goons. He wasn't suggesting that was their target. Other than newbie mercs, why would anyone do a wardec for the same price it costs them to do it?

@Robert: Marmite Collective did it for a whole year. Why? Because Goons and other CFC poses no threat to them, it's practically a turkey shoot (a 180B/month for Marmite), that makes their killboard look great and their members happy.

1B/week cost for 2.5B/week dead Goons is almost as bad offer as 1B/week Goons for wardec fee. In both cases I get 2-2.5B ISK dead Goons for 1 ISK payment. Everything under 4 is unacceptable.

"Marmite Collective did it for a whole year. Why? Because Goons and other CFC poses no threat to them, it's practically a turkey shoot (a 180B/month for Marmite), that makes their killboard look great and their members happy." So you're saying if you enjoy what you're doing you shouldn't get paid ? Thank god you're not my boss in rl, cuz I love my job.

Even Marmite tried to renegotiate terms in the end because they were losing out overall. What you have to ask though, is if other merc groups you are refusing, like Marmite and FA, if they were to offer goons a cheap retainer to defend them and were to put pressure on deadly, how long would deadly be willing to lose ships before they too asked for more isk? You'd find it a lot harder to get anything done against the CFC in highsec if Marmite were to side with them.

hahahhahahahha...Forsaken Asylum have a very long history of wardeccing noobs and failcorps, mining and industrial corps.They are highsec pee wee pee shitlords! CFC are clearly not a noob mining corp so therefore totally not their usual prey...

If Marmite did not make a huge profit from ganking gewns for free in highsec, then Tora should maybe start mining for profit!If the loot of their kills was not multiple times more worth than their losses, then the term "elite pvp" or "pro mercs" should not be mentioned in any way with Marmite...

More probably, CFC started a diplo campaign and contacted Marmite and told them, hey, GG pays you only the wardec fees, we can pay you more...

If Marmite really was interested in PVP, they just joined a nuzlsec block and got their ship reimbursed no problemo...

Just to clarify I did not "threaten" you to join GSF if you don't give me money. I was negotiating a contract on behalf of Forsaken. You have a tendency to talk down to people in an arrogant fashion with an extreme sense of entitlement. My last mail to you was explaining why it simply wouldn't be profitable for a mercenary business to work under such conditions. Then you decided to blow everything out of context and misrepresent the situation because you're delusional.